The Works of Heather S.

Month: October 2011

Gearing up for NaNoWritMo. I’m cheating this year, but I’m okay with that.

I don’t want to start a NEW novel, not when I’ve been working so hard on the one I’ve worked on for the last two NaNoWritMos. So while I’m going to be writing like a fiend, I won’t really worry about total wordcount, just daily wordcount.

I’ve been working on laying out the groundwork for Na’amah’s Caverns. Not writing, drawing. Getting ready for this next chapter which will require a basic outline of the caverns themselves, the detail I’m going to will never make it to the book, but I am doing the detail because I have found that filling out the area gives me ideas to put into the story. The environment is just as important as the people in it!

Here is what I have so far, I’m actually going into each room to make sure it’s laid out properly. Why yes, yes I am a bit detail oriented….Thank you.

Rough draft. 'Rough' being the keyword.

So while I gear up for the most insane month of writing of the year, here is a video that I found that I liked. I love watching people draw, helps me to realize I don’t have to have perfect technique to make a beautiful finished product!

For those of us who are interested in writing, and writing well. This is a lovely page to assist us with that. It explains how to make your characters believable, and realistic. It helps to explain WHY we do things and how to translate that into your writing.

This is also good when you are Role Playing someone or something that isn’t based off of your character. Stretching your writing ability is what every good author strives to do. Create a character that is nothing like you and see if you can make it believable. That’s harder than it sounds. Goodness forbid you write a villain, Villains are always written so one dimensional, to make it easy for folks to hate them, but some of the best villains are very much two dimensional, they should give a person pause, make them think. Really good villains are understandable, and driven by something other than “I am Evil, this is what I do.”

This page addresses romantic relationships as well. Which is important because I don’t know HOW many really bad romances I’ve read. Don’t write bad romances. Seriously…just…don’t.

This page helps you to ask the questions that need to be asked in order to make your writing the best damn writing it can be.

Skulls, Skulls, Skulls, I haven’t talked about skulls in what…five posts? I’m feeling a skully withdrawal coming on. So let’s do a post on skulls.

But not just ANY skulls, oh no, ’cause this blog is about quality, and taste, and shit that is so expensive I’ll never even be able to LOOK at it without emptying my bank account.

Okay, this post isn’t that bad. Actually, it’s really, really good. This post is about embroidery. Proof, that girls can be badass AND girly. Beat THAT asshole from the 3rd grade who told me otherwise.

Ahem. Anyway. My grandmother has this machine that embroiders, saving her hours and hours and HOURS of work. Its fantastic. But all she seems to have is flowers, or cute little animals holding buttons, or I don’t know…ships. In other words, nothing I would care to actually PUT on things.

Then I found this website, it’s called Urban Threads. It was made for me. Seriously, it’s got more skulls than I could ever possibly use, as well as a bunch of other good stuff. The blog is superb. Check out some of the patterns they offer:

Steampunk Skulls, can it get any better than this?

It's so CUTE!

This is just a taste, just a grain of sugar on that sweetspot. Go check it out, just don’t get lost, ’cause I did, and let me tell you…it was WORTH it!